Now that was a well-spent 15 minutes.
When President Biden flew to Michigan in late September to cheer on striking auto workers, political analysts declared it a historic — and risky — maneuver. Biden only stayed for about 15 minutes, but he was still the first president ever to join a picket line, consistent with his claim to be the most pro-union president in US history. But critics blasted Biden for picking sides, with Obama-era car czar Steve Rattner saying it was “outrageous” for Biden to sacrifice the president’s traditional neutrality on such matters.
Biden seems to have guessed right. The United Auto Workers (UAW) union has now settled its six-week strike against General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis with a deal that provides generous raises, improved benefits, and many other things the union demanded. The deal happened before the strike caused any major damage to the broader economy or devolved into nastiness, as some strikes have in the past. “I think it’s great,” Biden said of the deal.
Biden wins from the strike in at least two ways. First, he completely trumped Donald Trump, who railed against the UAW leadership and went to Michigan to rant about electric vehicles. At the onset of the strike, Trump said UAW president Shawn Fain was “not doing a good job” and predicted “those jobs are all going to be gone.” Trump made his own visit to Michigan during the strike, but instead of addressing unionized workers he showed up at a non-union shop to declare that electric vehicles are a “transition to hell.”
In reality, Fain delivered a better deal for his workers than many analysts expected. Full details of the agreement aren’t yet public, but it appears the automakers agreed to union protections at new plants for EVs and the batteries that power them, which was an important UAW demand. That doesn’t guarantee that EVs will succeed, but it does mean unionized workers at the Detroit Three won’t be unduly fired if there is a rapid transition from gas-powered vehicles to electrics.
Everything Trump said about the strike basically looks foolish or unhinged. This matters for more than just bragging rights between Biden and Trump, who seem likely to face each other in the 2024 presidential election. Union auto workers are a key voting bloc in at least two likely 2024 swing states, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump won no new friends among union workers in those states, while Biden possibly did. Anything that moves the vote one percentage point or less could be decisive. Advantage: Biden.
The president may also have won from the UAW strike because there seems to be new momentum to unionize workers in non-union parts of the auto industry, and beyond. The pugnacious Fain, emboldened by victory, vowed to commence unionization efforts at other automakers, such as Toyota, Honda, and Tesla. The timing seems right. Union membership has been declining for decades, yet public approval of unions has rebounded and is close to record highs.
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The UAW has tried before to enlist non-union auto workers, many in the South, and failed. If they target Tesla, they will encounter one of the most ardently anti-union CEOs in America in Elon Musk. But there are signs the nonunion automakers take this prospect seriously. Just a few days after the UAW strike ended, for instance, Toyota said it planned to offer its US workers a juicy raise. Others seem likely to do the same.
Biden obviously needs some help in his 2024 reelection bid, given that his approval rating is a weak 40% or so and approval of his handling of the economy is lower than that. Biden’s biggest economic problem is inflation, but the real harm from inflation comes when incomes fail to keep up with prices, and the typical paycheck buys less. That was the case during Biden’s first two years, and the trend only recently flipped, with incomes now rising by slightly more than inflation.
Biden doesn’t need the whole country to flip from positive to negative on his economic approval. What he does need is an edge among working-class swing voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and maybe Nevada and North Carolina. A tangible win for union workers who will see bigger paychecks in 2024 certainly doesn’t hurt.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.
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